Top Five Ways To Improve The Time Change

Daylight Saving Time begins in the U.S. on Sunday, March 11, and it is often difficult to adapt to the changing of the clocks.

In order to help people around the world better adjust to time changes, our judges have come up with The Top Five Ways To Improve The Time Change, along with a few comments.

Comment – While eliminating the time change altogether might be the best suggestion, it was ruled ineligible for this category due the fact that it would not technically improve the time change.

5. Set the clocks ahead at 2 p.m. on Friday instead of 2 a.m. on Sunday – It would be good for morale at work, you wouldn’t lose any sleep and the bars would not have to close early. And let’s face it, how much work is really being done in the late afternoons on Fridays anyway? In my town of Athens, Ohio, there were “time change disturbances” a few years ago when people were upset about the bars closing early from the time change. This is absolutely true, and this change would eliminate that ridiculous problem.

Comment – While most people call it Daylight Savings Time, the exact title in the U.S. is Daylight Saving Time. Countries all around the world also change their clocks and they all have their own names for the change. I am waiting for someone to sponsor it and name it something like the One-A-Day Daylight Saving Time or Daylight Saving Time brought to you by Timex.

4. Make it a big party like on New Year’s Eve – New Year’s Eve (or New Year Eve) is a rather arbitrary holiday, and you could argue that the Time Change provides more to celebrate than just putting up a new calendar. If you make people think it’s a fun event, more people would like it. You could even have a big countdown in the spring 5, 4, 3, 2, 0 and then 5,4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 0 in the fall!

Comment – I hate the switch to Daylight Saving Time, which doesn’t seem to really help anyone but just makes us all tired. Instead of saying “Spring Ahead, Fall Back,” the saying should be, “Spring Ahead, Fall Asleep.”

3. Add another day, too – If we can add an hour in March, why don’t we just add another day to the Time Change Weekend? The government could create a new day called Timeday that we have once a year in March. It would be a fun holiday on a three-day weekend and people would love it. And then when you turn the clocks back in the fall, you lose a day, but that day is Friday, so you have a four-day workweek that week and then a two-day weekend. It would not hurt anything and would just make the time change more fun.

Comment – Time Changes were much more difficult when I was younger and we actually had to reset all of the wall clocks, watches, oven clocks, microwave clocks (when we finally got a microwave) and every other clock. Today, most of the clocks just change themselves and there’s not much to do in the house. I usually can’t figure out how to change the clock in the car for a few weeks.

2. Move the clocks ahead three hours – If it is so great to have this one hour of extra sunlight, think how great it would be to have three extra hours of sunlight! Who cares about how much sunlight there is in the morning, but think about how nice it would be to have the sun out until midnight or so in the summers. Wouldn’t that save money and be more fun? I suppose the drive-in movie lobbyists would shoot this proposal down, but it would be great to get out of work and have so many hours of daylight still ahead of you.

Comment – Why not just move the thermometers up 10 degrees in the spring, too? Isn’t that really the same idea? People would think it was warmer and would spend more time outside and it would somehow improve the economy.

1. Figure out a way to help the pets understand the time change – Just because we change our clocks twice a year, the pets do not change the times that they want to be fed, go outside or receive attention. And while we may go to bed earlier, sleep later, stay at work later or make other changes due to the time changes, the pets don’t care and will still wake us, tear up the sofa or make messes if we don’t follow their own personal clocks.